China's developers winning the game

Achieving big success in overseas markets, cultural elements and ancient stories gain more popularity on mobile devices, Yang Yang reports.

China's first AAA-rated video game developed by Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong, based on the 16th-century Chinese classic Journey to the West, won the Best Action Game and Players' Voice awards at The Game Awards 2024.

Its global success — 28 million copies sold and $900 million in revenue, with 25 percent from overseas — marked a milestone for China's gaming industry.

The China branch of IGN, a game review website, said that the game's "outstanding quality meets all the expectations over the years. This is a truly competitive game on the global stage".

This achievement is far from an anomaly. Data from the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, the national game industry research institute, and China gaming database CNG show that revenue from Chinese self-developed games in overseas markets grew from $3.08 billion in 2014 to $16.37 billion in 2023, a more than fourfold increase over 10 years.

The 2024 China Game Industry Report shows that China's self-developed games garnered $18.56 billion overseas last year, a nearly 13.4 percent increase from the previous year.

In the mobile games sector, among the 100 top-grossing titles in the world, 40 are from China, with revenue reaching $2.11 billion, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the global mobile game revenue.

This success is fueled by a strategic mix of cultural creativity, technological flexibility, and smart market tactics, industry insiders say.

Chinese developers have learned to repackage ancient narratives and thoughts into globally resonant experiences.

Black Myth: Wukong, for example, re-imagines Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, as a brooding antihero in a dark fantasy world.

Preserving the core theme of rebellion, the game taps into universal tropes, such as the pursuit of freedom and justice, individual growth and cultivation, love and brotherhood, the complexity of human nature and the importance of kindness.

While drawing from the rich cultural backdrop of the novel, it also skillfully blends elements like traditional Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province) storytelling, ancient poetry and ancient architectural designs, offering players a unique glimpse into Chinese culture.

US gaming blogger Legendary Drops, who has more than 270,000 followers on YouTube, said in one of his posts about Black Myth: Wukong: "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this game's story, character writing, voice acting, music, and visual production.

"When I started playing, I knew this game would be good, but I never imagined an action game, or a first-time developer like Game Science, to deliver a story experience, rather than just telling you a story.

"You can feel the reverence for Journey to the West through Black Myth: Wukong. You see it in the art, in the music, in the characters, the voice acting, the writing, the stop-motion, and the hand-drawn cut-scenes," he adds. "You see how much respect they have for the work they were adapting."

To help players better understand the game, some foreign bloggers created videos explaining the story of Journey to the West, attracting tens of thousands of viewers.

In a previous interview, Feng Ji, the game's producer, said that Journey to the West and Sun Wukong are among the cultural intellectual properties that best represent Chinese culture, adding that he hoped "the game will intrigue players around the world to learn more about Chinese culture".

Similarly, Genshin Impact, another popular game developed by Mihoyo, does not confine itself to domestic culture as an original Chinese game.

It blends open-world adventure with anime aesthetics to showcase Chinese elements, including incorporating traditional Chinese opera and ethnic instruments into the game's music and character design.

One example is the traditional Chinese opera-inspired character Yun Jin. Her aria The Divine Damsel of Devastation amassed over 150 million views globally, sparking curiosity about Peking Opera.

"A 'Chinese story' isn't just about traditional tales from ancient China. Rather, it's a story told by Chinese people, using their perspectives and values," said Feng in an interview on State broadcaster China Central Television last year.

As long as a story is created by Chinese people, it remains a "Chinese story", regardless of its themes, characters, or setting, writes Li Huichuan, a researcher of digital game culture from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, in a published article, adding that "the essence of national culture lies in the cultural ideas and values conveyed, not just in the story's form or structure".

Despite the design of the game scenes in Mihoyo's other popular game Honkai: Star Rail that ranges from the natural environment, architectural style to daily life referring to foreign cultures, the story is still Chinese — using values passed on from ancient times such as "sacrificing minor interests for the greater good" and the principles of benevolent governance, such as "the people are more important than the ruler" and "putting people first".

The key to establishing the concept of Chinese games and stories does not lie in whether the game's content, style, plot, characters and story originate from China, but rather if they convey Chinese values through the structure and form of the game and story, Li writes.

China's success in mobile gaming — holding 73 percent of its domestic market and 40 percent of the global market — is credited to gaming developers' tactical focus on the mobile market.

By optimizing games for mobile devices, studios like Mihoyo and Tencent Games have successfully captured emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where smartphone usage outpaces consoles. At the same time, releasing games across multiple platforms such as Steam, PlayStation, and Epic Games has further expanded their reach.

Whiteout Survival, a strategy game released by Century Games in February 2023, has been downloaded over 100 million times globally and consistently ranked among the top-selling games in more than 100 countries and regions. At the same time, the domestic version has ranked first on the WeChat mini-game best-seller list and remained in the top five on the iOS best-seller chart since its launch in April last year.

Chen Qi, chief executive officer of Century Games, says that the main reason this game is so successful both at home and abroad is because it embraced the trend of making strategy games more casual.

The rise of hyper-casual "mini-games" further underscores this agility. In 2024, China's mini-game sector revenue doubled to $5.58 billion, capitalizing on fragmented play times. Mushroom Wars, a casual title developed by Chinese game company 4399, grossed $378 million overseas. These games become addictive to mobile users — easy to pick up, but difficult to put down.

Success abroad demands more than linguistic tweaks. Tencent Games' Honor of Kings retooled characters and lore for Western audiences, while the mobile version of Call of Duty tailored events to regional festivals.

Li Shilin, Tencent's localization expert, says the biggest challenge for Chinese companies going global is truly understanding and integrating into local cultures to solve localization issues. While globalization is a major trend, the success of each game often hinges on how well they handle the specific details and challenges of localization, he adds.

Despite progress, pitfalls loom. Cultural misreadings persist: When overseas players saw Black Myth: Wukong's protagonist don a golden headband, many mistook it for a "coronation" rather than a curse — a stark reminder of context gaps.

Technological gaps also linger. While China's mobile prowess is unmatched, console gaming remains nascent, accounting for just 4.59 percent of domestic revenue.

The $300 million budget of Black Myth: Wukong — a rarity in China — highlights the uphill battle to rival Western AAA titans.

Ao Ran, executive vice-president of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, highlights that China's gaming industry must shift from merely "going abroad" to achieving high-quality "globalization".

Bao Leiping, a professor and deputy director of the Institute of Sociology with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, says that in the future, through continuous innovation and cultural integration, domestic games will enrich global players' experiences and showcase Chinese culture's diversity and creativity, promoting international cultural exchanges.

Additionally, they should delve deeper into traditional culture beyond superficial elements to explore profound cultural and spiritual values, she adds.

Contact the writer at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn